Episode 31: Side by Side Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes vs Avengers: United They Stand

This week we took a short break from the DCAU to talk with Hal Hefner of Heavy Metal Magazine’s “Gates” about both Avengers animated series: 1999’s “Avengers: United They Stand” and 2010’s “Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes”. Back to Marvel, eh? Hopefully just a short visit. We attempt to break the Avengers curse which swallowed two episodes whole!

This episode’s topics:
Vision is NOT Commander Data!
No! NO! The world is NOT about to break, but my ears are!
Captain America jerking off to Hulk
Timmitations: Then and Now
Working on rodents instead of Superheroes?!
Winter Soldier?!? NOOOO!
How many episodes do you GIVE a show before giving up?(5 is enough, right?!)
Shitty animation; then and now!

12 thoughts on “Episode 31: Side by Side Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes vs Avengers: United They Stand”

I sort of feel a little sad you guys didn’t like the New Avengers. But I can see your points on this and leave it there. I’ve started seeing the series a week ago with a friend, there was only one thing that bugged me design wise and it was Samson’s design, yuck. Everything else I can live with. I did like the intro to Hank Pym, I’ve actually never seen him fight before as Antman so it was enjoyable to watch the henchman get beat up by someone so small and get shrunk and dragged away by ants. It makes me wonder what does the point of view for a new person watching look like. I’ve had some previous knowledge of Marvel characters so I’m biased on some parts, so whenever my buddy was asking questions on a character that just showed up, I would answer the questions as best as I could. So if I had to answer all these questions on who’s this guy then marvel might need to try a little harder. I never saw that 1999 show, something must have told me to stay away, maybe because at that time the only characters I knew were the top 3, and they seemed very small compared to the other guys in the title. With the new one, I knew most of the characters right off the bat. If I were to recommend any episode, I believe the one dealing with Graviton was quite enjoyable to watch, it was the one that sold me anyway, I’m a sucker for a good fight. Also, Black Panther was always a plus with me, my friend and I kept getting kicks out of him doing stuff Batman would do. Heck in all sense of the word, black panther is Batman haha. Oh since we’re talking about re-launches, Cartoon Network is bringin in a revamp of a series I cherished as a kid, I’d like to know your thoughts Neil or Ben http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enQXITlKRgg I am interested but at the same time I know it’ll never beat the first. It’ll have to take alot of work to impress me.

To be honest, Ronnie, we gave a little bit of credit to the newer Avengers cartoon. At least it has the right characters leading the show, and there’s room for improvement, IF Marvel listens to the fans the way they did for X-Men Evolution.

It’s not a complete loss, but the first season was executed kind of poorly.

Compare this to the Bruce Timm Batman series, which started off as supplementary material for the Tim Burton films but then superseded it, becoming the DCAU. If Marvel was HALF as forward-thinking as Timm was, I’d give them a little more credit.

Haha ouch, never heard of the term Blanchard, what does that mean excactly? So your saying if they took baby steps, things would have worked better? Like with Batman and Superman, they could have done Ironman and Captain America and then moved up. Theres the X-men side which seemed alot easier to handle to me, Wolverine certainly helped in that department, but with even that, the world is just too big to even jump on Avengers. How I would love to see the Avengers do the Civil War saga , that was my favorite point when Steve and Tony had some very big views on how things should be done, but this would take alot of time, like their Avengers movie being hinted at in every marvel movie now. This was a smart move at the very least wouldn’t you say? Marvel is taking baby steps up to a point where everything comes together. Don’t get me wrong I do give shows chances, but at the same time it’s hard to over look things that may have been dismissed in the process to please the new viewer.
It’s kinda like what transformer shows do. They either hit the nail on the head or miss. With Armada, it was good and I loved the creative thoughts of puting the Go Bots in the series without being to over ambitious about it. Not to mention it stuck with a 2D look that I like. Then Energon came out and it continued the story but I was surprise to see CG everywhere, it was hard to watch at that point. The last one I saw was Transformers Animated. Japanese influence was very evident there, and I wasn’t too into the design, but after watching it for a while I liked it and the story was compeling enough to want more.
I hear there’s a new series, but I haven’t had the time to fully watch it. It looks like they have the Beast Wars 3D look and Peter Cullen as Optimus is always a plus.

So basically you’re saying they shouldn’t do team series just stick to solo characters, but we’ve now had years of solo character shows, Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron-Man. Frankly I think they’ve handled the team dynamic of the series pretty well, giving certain characters their own episodes to shine while advancing the overall subplots well. The 5 initial episodes, yes, the animation style and models were a bit rough, but you can see, just in the design for Tony Stark, they have improved some of their visuals as the series progressed. What do I want in an Avengers series, a show with good story that will entertain me, characters as a comic reader I’d recognize on screen and who do act as they would/should (Yes, Cap is corny, always had been, Hawkeye made a habit of pointing that out constantly in the comics), and action with a hint of ‘from the comics’. Sorry, Just can’t agree with your assessment of the series, though, I’ve yet to hear a podcast of a show you actually do like, so maybe I should listen to more than 5 podcasts before making final judgement.

I actually liked (of the few episodes I saw) of Teen Titans. Keep in mind I never read the comic books. But for what it was, I enjoyed it.

As far as Puffy Ami Yumi (or whatever), I actually liked that show for what it was worth, too. I’m also a fan of Two Stupid Dogs. I’m not directly comparing the shows, but it’s the silly sorta nonsensical cartoon that I like… the kind you don;t have to think to much about, and can just enjoy it in how it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Kinda like how Johnny Bravo and Cow and Chicken were going at. Apparently alot of the new cartoon network shows like Flap Jack and Chowder are going the same route. That Adventure Time show looks interesting.

Discovered your podcast and been giving it a shot, but I’m not sure if you guys are animation aficionados or really really dislike cartoons, but the Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes podcast is one that caused me to write. I’m totally with you on the United series, not a very good series in anyway, but I’m finding it hard to get where you are basing your comments on at the time. Now granted, this was a year ago, but it seemed you were basing you whole opinion on what seemed to be 5 web episodes as a representation of the whole series. I’ll give you those 5 webisodes were rough in it’s beginning, but calling it “crap” just seems an attempt to sound ‘internet edgy’. I’m curious what your opinions of the series are now. Since you make comments on a ‘series’ yet admit in it you hadn’t actually watched the whole series. I’d be like me making a full judgement on your podcast as a whole when I’ve now only listed to 6 episodes out of the total number you’ve done (which I have to say, my feelings of being impressed is leaning one way more than another atm for total value of animation review).

if you look at our tag board, which is run by an analytics program, you would see the “Good Animation” tag is far bigger than the “Bad Animation” tag. So we do cover better shows far more than bad shows.

And yes, we did watch real, full grown episodes. I named both Ultron episodes(not a webisode) the cosmic cube episode(not a webisode) as episodes I’ve seen, yet you’re neglecting that to say “Oh, you ONLY saw the webisodes”. The show is a rushed, cheaply animated production. No level of fan love would ever change that. And as I said, if a show utterly fails to bring me in after 8 or so episodes, why must I keep watching it?

Avengers was lucky I stuck around after the intro, honestly.

So you’re looking for the “We agree with Shawn” podcast. Trust me, Neil and I aren’t calling shows ‘crap’ just to be internet edgy. Personally, we both hate that. What’s funny is this episode is sandwiched between the JLU ep(which is one where Neil and I could not STOP gushing about how great it was) and the X-men side by side(where we again could not stop gushing about X-Men Evolution).